


Names You Never Speak Out Loud

by codenamecynic



Series: Shadows Down the Garden Path [3]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Elf/Human Relationship(s), Emotional Baggage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Doubt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 11:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20674946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: After an awkward reunion in Arrabar that leaves Harper with more questions than answers, the party makes their way to Silverymoon in chase of Katy's long lost father. Harper takes a moment to visit Vigo, heart overfull and ready to make a few more mistakes.





	Names You Never Speak Out Loud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [vhaerauning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhaerauning/gifts), [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts).

> For anyone not my party members who happens to stumble across this fic, our game takes place in a bastardized Faerun that exists between editions, and this story references characters from other posted fics. Briefly:
> 
> Katy/Ceitidh: Wild mage sorceress and Harper's best friend/semi-adopted daughter with a flair for terrible goth fashion and large explosions. ([The Rules](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456000))
> 
> Khem: Diviner wizard and Harper's dubious party co-parent who is generally unamused by everything he does (and also may love him a little- or a lot) ([Khem's Codices](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15701094/chapters/36489219))
> 
> Shay: Drunken master monk, late of the Order of Long Death. Also Katy's girlfriend and Harper's other adopted disaster-daughter. ([Emotional Discharge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Alternative_Ethics/works/15692340))
> 
> Cort: Harper's former best friend and love of his life, on-again, off-again, and currently maybe-again, which is causing Harper a large amount of angst and doubt. ([Swordmaster's Son](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15688893/chapters/36454428))
> 
> Vigo: Harper's elven lover in Silverymoon who dispenses wisdom, affection, and home-cooked meals ([Wherever You Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16612964))
> 
> Gerald: A footman in Harper's childhood home, hired by his brother Jorran. Cheerful, roguish and a dedicated advertiser of his sister Geraldine's (yes, seriously) bespoke wigs, Gerald has proven to be both remarkably unsqueamish and very obviously interested in Harper. ([Attention](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Alternative_Ethics/works/20130412))

He doesn’t want to admit it, but when they leave Arrabar, striking out under a sky cloudless as an omen, Taliesin is almost grateful.

It isn’t a sentiment he shares with anyone else, feeling all too keenly the unasked questions from all sides. Has he said his goodbyes, and what they entailed. Has he sufficiently patched things with his sister, reassured his brother, tidied up the household. Squared things with Cort. Will he miss it. Is he sorry to go.

It’s just as well that no one asks, because there are no answers that he can think of to explain how little this still feels like home. How the memories of this place as it was when he was a child war with the way it’s been reshaped in his brother’s hands, how the new paint and plaster do little to hide what he’s always felt were the shadows that hung from every corner like tapestries kept only for the stately authority of them, their aging aesthetic to no one’s particular taste. 

It’s an ungracious feeling and the guilt of it makes him drag his feet, bears him into the ground like the sprawling roots of the white pear tree that still stands outside the swordmaster’s quarters, raining its blossoms across the earth. Maybe he’s less the tree and more its petals, sheared away by the wind and cast wherever they may fall, tumbling fragile, bruised and bloodied until they shrivel. 

Its an unpleasant thought, but then so is the one he has right before Khem finishes the casting of her teleportation circle and they step inside, his face turned upward to the sun reflecting off the uppermost windows, bright enough to leave spots on the insides of his eyelids. The one that reminds him that, despite best efforts and best intentions, they are on their own, slipping away like forgotten ghosts, their parting witnessed by no one.

It shouldn’t hurt, that. If anything it should reassure; surely they will come back. Katy seems happier here, enamored as ever of Celeste and her brilliant goodness. Khem for the first time in months seems pleased, honored finally for everything she actually holds dear and with an eager pupil to hang on her every word. Shay is - well, Shay. But she doesn’t seem unhappy and perhaps the time to herself has allowed her the space to think, to settle into new patterns, ones interwoven with Katy’s bright, hopeful threads and all the gentle company either of them could ever hope for.

And he’s so happy for them. He really, truly is. But it doesn’t change the way that he feels like _ he’s _the piece that doesn’t fit, rabbiting around in the background of a place that is supposed to be his. He wants to make a home for them, that’s still true. He just thought he might feel a little bit at home there too.

But that’s just selfish, and he can’t make much more room for selfish things, not off on another quest as they are. This one’s personal too, a search for Katy’s father that he himself set into motion, pushing and pushing and pushing as he does. It’s too late to wonder if maybe he pushes too hard; the floodgates have opened and water rushes in, rising around him all the time.

He’d better just remember how to swim.

**

He wasn’t going to see Vigo, this time.

Taliesin’s not quite sure how he arrived at that decision. Guilt, maybe. Unfair to keep bringing his troubles to a stranger’s door, even a pleasant stranger who has always been so kind. Especially when those troubles have to do with another man and are perennial, springing up like stubborn daisies on an unmarked grave.

He still wants to, though, because he’s no better than he ought to be and because his lack of self-control is alarming, just a listless ship drifting from port to port in search of safe harbor. He’s already fucked up once, his last night in Arrabar spent not scratching at Cort’s door like a dog left outside but with _ Gerald _ of all people, and he still doesn’t know if that was rebellion, self-preservation, or some kind of strange natural instinct that bids him to take things offered to him just because they happen to be there.

Or maybe, _ maybe, _ it’s just because Cort didn’t ask him not to.

And that, of course, implies that he has to be asked. That he needs instruction. That he’s the kind of shitty human being who can’t be trusted to moderate himself, who needs guidance, herded into the proper direction because he doesn’t have the good sense to get out of his own way.

None of that seems particularly incorrect, because here he is, in Silverymoon again on his way to Vigo like his invitation really is always open. It was Khem, ironically enough, to hand him the perfect excuse (not that he needs one), two horses lent that needed to be returned. He doesn’t know if there is purpose behind the suggestion, whether she’s just tired of his presence or if it’s something she’s dreamed, and he isn’t sure he really wants to know. 

And so he goes. Walks the garden path full of flowers and herbs like he's travelling to another world, drawing his borrowed horses behind him like the cost of admission into a realm where he doesn't belong.

He always brings darkness with him, draws it around him like a cloak, and still it's not enough. The light here is too bright and Vigo sees him. Always sees so much more than he should.

He's not entirely sure why he tries it, creeping through open doors and along walls like the solidity of this little meadow house in the middle of a city will anchor his restless spirit. He just wants to watch, to see the man as he exists without being seen. It doesn't seem right that it's exactly the same. Vigo doesn't wear the quietude like a mask, doesn't wrap wisdom around himself like a robe, he just _ is _and it makes Taliesin feel naked as a squalling newborn every time.

He hates that, and hate makes him so undeserving of this peace. 

His footsteps are silent but perhaps his thoughts are too loud, shouting his presence into the still air. Either way, Vigo knows he is there, smiles and indulges him like he always does, permits himself to be embraced, to have Taliesin wrap his arms around his neck and cling to his back like some of Vigo’s innate goodness will lift him up and carry him.

And the trouble with that is that Taliesin thinks it would, if he ever managed to stay long enough to let it sink in. Vigo’s easy warmth carries through the sharpest, most brittle pieces of him like the sparkle of sunlight on ice; not enough for a thaw, but sufficient to smooth the most ragged edges.

Taliesin just isn’t the kind of person who stays, even when he wants to.

He shouldn’t have come. He knows that as soon as Vigo turns around, draws him in, greets him with the usual gentle enthusiasm as though he is truly pleased to see him. He respects Vigo too much to think that it’s a boldfaced lie, but the doubt in his own intentions shades the brilliance of the moment. Makes him awkward, stilted, tangles his tongue and locks his eyes to the tabletop, to the callused stretch of Vigo’s hands over his.

They are not the hands he wants, and that is nobody’s fault but his own. 

He could have had Cort; he could have just let it happen. He didn’t _ have _ to stop him, didn’t have to pull away. Just like he didn’t have to run after him in the street after being _ left, again, _ in the tavern, always trying to grasp an ember with both hands even when he knows how badly he will burn. 

He didn’t have to but he did, because it felt like he should, and this is where he is now. This is what that’s gotten him, a thousand unanswered questions and an ache in his chest that won’t ever heal, like a thorn beneath the skin, pricking and pricking and pricking forever.

But it’s too soon to decide what he’ll do if Cort doesn’t want him, too early to give up all hope. Only he feels the threat of it, the shadow looming over his shoulder, and so he-

What. Drags it with him, literally darkens Vigo’s doorstep for no other reason than to prove that he can. That he is free and his own and that he likes it that way, that he wants this.

In reality he’s just a liar, as usual. And Vigo, also as usual, will not tell him to stop.

So why not test that.

He does, too. It’s not so uncommon for his tongue to tie itself in knots, for his usual easy camaraderie to peter out into awkward silence as he tries to manage the overflow of emotion that always threatens to well to the surface like a pinprick drop of blood. He needs a moment to gather his thoughts, to order himself, and usually that comes with the need for distraction. It’s a crutch, relying on his body to convey the myriad of oppositional ways he feels. He believes that actions often speak more forcefully and truthfully than words do, and yet some things are just too hard to say.

He all but drags Vigo into his bedroom, a torrent of nails and teeth and bruising kisses. It’s a bit early in the morning for this kind of passion, clashing against the stillness beneath the trees, the way the scent of tea still lingers in the air and on Vigo’s breath. It feels forced and he’s too forceful, shoving and pushing, everywhere at once. He slams his own elbow hard enough into the doorframe to make his arm go numb and still he doesn’t stop, not even when he can feel Vigo go carefully still for a heartbeat of a moment, a work-roughened hand closing over the joint to soothe an ache he won’t even acknowledge.

And still, he doesn’t say no, doesn’t ask Taliesin to stop, so they end up down across Vigo’s bed, clothing half shed and tangled in lavender scented sheets. The smell, the texture, the feel of them is wrong, so soothing and calming and nothing at all of woodsmoke and sulphur. He feels like a match struck and then held, burning down to fingertips, and all of this fucking nature is killing him, leaving him starving to death with fruit on the vine only inches out of reach.

He sits up, straddled over Vigo’s lap, hands sloppy and drunken to fumble with his own belt. “I want you to fuck me.”

“Why?”

_ Why? _ He doesn’t know what to say, the query making his brain stutter. Vigo looks up at him, quizzical and concerned and he doesn’t want to see it, has to look away before it ruins him completely. Forget the belt - he leans down to bury his mouth against the curve of Vigo’s throat instead, dragging stubbled chin against his jaw. “Because I need it.”

“Taliesin…”

He doesn’t want to hear it, rushes ahead headlong and reckless. “I need to feel it. I need you to hold me down and take me, I need-” He gulps for air, drowning. “I need-”

He thinks for a moment he’s about to get his wish; Vigo reverses their positions almost effortlessly, dragging them over to spread Taliesin out on the bed beneath him. There’s a momentary instinct to fight back but he doesn’t, won’t, the urge snuffed like a candle flame when Vigo takes his wrists and pins them down. It stills him, pausing his racing thoughts, just long enough for him to register the way Vigo is looking at him. The hard edge to the fair features that he almost never sees.

“I don’t think that’s what you need at all.”

“I-”

“No, Taliesin.”

He doesn’t know what to do, staring up into Vigo’s face like he doesn’t know what he sees. He does fight then, struggling to sit up and pulling at his wrists when Vigo doesn’t let him, thrashing for a hard second against a grip unbruising but unshakable, until he just… stops. He doesn’t want to do Vigo harm, would never want that, and he doesn’t deserve it. This is all about Taliesin and what Taliesin thinks Taliesin needs to feel, something to bring the messy coil of emotions inside to the surface, to release in the only way he knows how. To make it hurt.

He’s a fool to think that he’d get that here. A fucking idiot.

He stops, lies still, forces his body to go plaint and motionless, and eventually Vigo sighs and lets him go. He shifts around to kneel on the bed, untethering Taliesin from his moorings, setting him adrift. He feels it too, misses the weight of Vigo across his body, longing and lonely and so perilously fucking stupid.

Gods. He wants to cry.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I- no. I am. I should be. I know better than this, to pull you into something that- I shouldn’t have come here, it was wrong.”

Vigo touches him again, this time just an unassuming pressure on his shoulder when Taliesin makes to get up, curling around this cold feeling in his middle like it’s something he can hide. “But you are here now.”

That… is true. And Vigo won’t tell him to leave any more than he’ll ask him to stay, but there is some tacit reassurance in the gesture that speaks more loudly than the quiet words do, and he stops. Rubs his hands over his face, digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. He can’t make this worse if he just does nothing, so he just… sits there.

Behind him Vigo sighs, reaches out like he can’t bring himself not to, hands moving over Taliesin’s hunched shoulders like he’ll smooth the tension out of his soul through the gentle contact. It works, despite his expectations, despite his desire for the opposite, and eventually he no longer feels so heated, so frantic, the perpetual weight of fatigue settling over him like a smothering blanket too heavy to shake off. 

Taliesin laughs, joyless, mirthless. “I do make a mess of things, don’t I?”

He can feel Vigo shift uncomfortably; Taliesin hates that too, hates that he caused this. Still, Vigo comes to wind himself gently across his back in a reversal of their position before, wraps strong arms around his hollow, aching chest like he’ll gather all Taliesin’s fraying pieces back together. “Perhaps it is I who should apologize. I want to give you what you want, only…” 

He doesn’t finish the words, but he doesn’t have to. Vigo is not going to help Taliesin tear himself to pieces, that isn’t the kind of person Vigo is. He may not stop him, but it should shock no one that he would decline to participate.

“Sometimes what I want isn’t reasonable.”

“That sounds like something you’ve told yourself many times.”

His eyelids _ burn _ with the truth of that, unbidden tears welling to sear him with their salt. He will _ not _ cry though, he won’t. There is no point, it won’t _ change _ anything.

“It’s never a good idea for me to want things too badly.” He’s said that before too.

Vigo is silent for a long moment, his warm mouth pressing chaste, idle kisses to Taliesin’s shoulder. He isn’t entirely sure Vigo even realizes he’s doing it, the instinct to comfort, to soothe so much a part of his nature. To be so calm; Taliesin can’t imagine.

“Is this about your friend? Your… lover?”

Taliesin also doesn’t want to talk about this - except why else would he come here, knowing exactly what he would get? He can see that light now too, from the bottom of his deep little well; the way he’d known all along exactly how this would play out. What a fucking fool.

And like that self-same fool, he answers him. Haltingly, stuttering his way through it, long pauses like he’s lost his train of thought. Fighting each word that wants to come out of his mouth, forcing them into a slow ordered march instead of a stampede. It’s overwhelming and it exhausts him, but by the end he thinks he manages to explain. As much as one can explain thirty years of addiction, of obsession, of love and hurt and missing pieces, questions and calls into the darkness unanswered. Honestly he doesn’t know what sense it makes, if it even has to make sense, or if it just needs to be pulled out of him like poison leaching from a wound. Maybe he’s trying to save himself after all.

But he still can’t fucking say Cort’s name out loud.

“So what will you do now?” Vigo asks finally. He has no idea how long they’ve been there, migrating out of their position one inch at a time until they’re sitting in the center of the bed, positions mirrored in crossed legs and shoulders bent to bring them close. Vigo is still without a shirt but it seems unremarkable at this point; the only thing Taliesin can look at is his own hands, held together where Vigo cradles them, long fingers stroking over the horrible scars across his knuckles, remnants of blood, silvered glass and bad decisions. They’ve faded somewhat over time, mixed in with the detritus of other more pressing concerns. 

“Nothing, I suppose. Take care of Katy, the others. Give him time. I…” he takes a deep breath in, lets it out. It’s not so much a sigh as an emptying, the whistle of wind across a void. “I need him to make up his mind. I already know what I would choose.” It’s what he will always choose.

Vigo wisely does not ask. At least, not about that. “What will you do if he decides against your reunion?”

“I don’t know.” That, at least, is honest. “But I suppose it would be better than being left.” _ Again. _ He manages to bite down on the word, gripping it between his teeth.

“You would prefer not to try?”

"I don’t know if I trust myself. I always want, is the thing. Whatever he’ll give me, even if it’s just a little, just enough that I can…” He swallows, the idea leaving his throat sore and dry. “The last time he left, it… got ugly. It was my fault, most of it, but I... lost myself. And the time before that…"

"...Does he make a habit of leaving you?"

Even now he can't say yes without it feeling like a betrayal. "Not always. He used to be the only person who cared about what happened to me. After my mother died, he was the only person who tried to…" he tapers off into disjointed silence, the words constricting his throat as if they don't want to be given voice.

"Tried to what, Taliesin?"

"Love me." The words come out flat and colorless. "I know it's difficult."

"It really isn't."

He does look at Vigo then, almost afraid of what he'll see, like he'll be told he's being ridiculous, but Vigo just looks tired. It's an unfamiliar expression, though still made gentle by the easy way he smiles and touches Taliesin's cheek.

"Does he love you, then?"

"I don't know. I thought he did. Once upon a time, back before everything became such a fucking mess. He’s never said it, but I thought- the way we were, I thought- maybe I was wrong. I’ve been wrong about so many things.”

“Do you feel wrong?”

Always, somehow, but he still answers honestly - though whether that’s what he believes or just wants to believe, he can’t say. “No. I think he cares, or once did. But it was also easier to let himself believe I was dead for five years than to come after me, so.” That sounds so heart wrenchingly pathetic it sticks in his throat; he clears it awkwardly, looks away. “I think it’s maybe just better for him to decide.”

Tellingly Vigo says nothing, does nothing, an immeasurable moment stretching out until he takes in a slow deep breath, leaning forward to press his lips against Taliesin’s forehead in a way that belies all the things he isn’t saying. Vigo is good at that, keeping those thoughts inside. Taliesin will never be as skilled, not even he thinks with three hundred years of practice. 

“You want to say something.”

“It isn’t my place to do so.”

“Will you anyway?”

Vigo looks at him like he is so very young, fragile and new. “I worry, only. Because I care for you. I don’t wish to see your heart hurt, even if you have a mind to break it yourself.”

“I wish I could say that I know what I’m doing.”

“That’s not something that gets any easier. Not even with age.”

Taliesin smiles at that, small and rueful, but he at least can meet Vigo’s eyes. “I’m sorry, for before. I don’t mean to be this way.”

Vigo shakes his head. “I only want you as you are. You are not required to pretend, not for my benefit.”

The honesty stings, just like it always does. “I’ll try to remember that.”

It’s getting late. He should go before the sun is much higher in the sky, but he can’t help but feel like he shouldn’t leave things like this, his clothes and emotions strewn across the floor. Somehow it’s easier to extricate himself naked from a bed than it is stripped bare in this conversation, but he shouldn’t linger any longer. Vigo is likely sick of him, and well he should be, and even if nothing else he’s promised Katy.

Vigo watches him dress, awkward and shamefaced in the silence, painfully embarrassed by his own ridiculousness yet again. Taliesin isn’t even sure what to say in parting, his supposed silver tongue failing him utterly, and almost meltingly relieved when Vigo stands to take his face in his hands.

He kisses him, feather light, his cheek, his lips, his temple, and pulls him in close. He holds him there, encouraging, subtly restraining, until Taliesin relaxes and hugs him back, cautious and grateful and perilously unsure.

“Come back,” Vigo says, low and in his ear. Vigo speaks as though for him and no one else; it matters little that they are alone. “I want to see you safe. Will you do this for me?”

Eyes burning and heart in his throat, Taliesin nods, unable to speak. Knowing, Vigo lets him go.

**Author's Note:**

> So there are a few folks reading these things from outside our weird little party, and I just want to say, a) hi! and b) you should introduce yourself and tell me what you're getting out of these fics, because I really am super curious. Thank you for reading :D


End file.
